Just because she doesn't have a pair of actual bollocks doesn't mean she's any worse than any other pay driver we have ever seen.

No, of course not. Her totally unremarkable record speaks for that.

And comparing her to the worst drivers in previous decades is stupid. The level of talent in F1 is improving all the time (pay driver issue aside), so to compare her to, say, the worst driver on the grid 40 bloody years ago is retarded.

It's pretty clear that she's not good enough to get a full time drive. Williams will not let her drive on Fridays. Maldonado's millions wouldn't allow it and denying Bottas mileage would be lunacy.

Call me sexist, I really don't care - it's blindingly obvious, for anyone willing to see it, that she's in F1 purely because she's female and Toto's wife. Discrimination can work both ways.

How do you know? They were talking about her replacing Bottas as the Friday driver if he got promoted.

She wasn't Totos wife when she first started working for Williams and driving the Sim . She was still Susie Stoddart then.

She sounds like she has always had good connections, how did she get the DTM drive?

Read that back to yourself, in the past 5 years she accumulated 4 points. Two of her team mates did more than that in 1 race.

In there two season together Green got 59 points, two wins and two 3rds. Susie got 4 points. Hardly

Normally when they only score in one race in a season it means exceptional circumstances not out and out skill. .

and Green I believe got promoted to a works seat. Anyway I was disproving that her team mates were all fighting for podiums. Only 2 were over what 4 years?. Never mind that not all cars are equal. In privateer teams two drivers can have different specs but I don't follow DTM enough to know whether that is true in this case.

But at the end of the day Williams have 3 years worth of Sim data to give them an idea of whether she is F1 standard even for a 3rd driver / development driver. Which is a lot better than us looking at DTM scores with only some of the info.

Read that back to yourself, in the past 5 years she accumulated 4 points. Two of her team mates did more than that in 1 race.

In there two season together Green got 59 points, two wins and two 3rds. Susie got 4 points. Hardly

Normally when they only score in one race in a season it means exceptional circumstances not out and out skill. .

and Green I believe got promoted to a works seat. Anyway I was disproving that her team mates were all fighting for podiums. Only 2 were over what 4 years?. Never mind that not all cars are equal. In privateer teams two drivers can have different specs but I don't follow DTM enough to know whether that is true in this case.

But at the end of the day Williams have 3 years worth of Sim data to give them an idea of whether she is F1 standard even for a 3rd driver / development driver. Which is a lot better than us looking at DTM scores with only some of the info.

I see where you're coming from, and agree on the sim data. But I cannot believe that she would have got the place had it not be for her connection to Toto.

One must wonder how many of the criticisms of Wolff found here are based off of numbers on her Wikipedia page.

As opposed to people saying she is better than Deletraz, Rossett or Ide based on absolutely nothing?

We've seen what Deletraz, Rossett and Ide could do in Formula One. Why not wait and see what Wolff can do before dismissing her as useless? She's suffered in DTM for years with out-dated machinery and in 2005 "Susie suffered a broken left leg and a fractured left ankle after a fall near her Scottish home in January and had ten pins and two plates inserted into her leg as a result". The left foot is the braking foot, mind you, considered the most important leg of the two when it comes to precise feelings in motor-racing. In her younger days she was consistently in the running for the McLaren BDRC Young Driver of the Year award and was crowned the top female karter in the world in 2000.

Regardless she's been doing the sim since '09 took out an older car around Silverstone, if she couldn't handle it she wouldn't be doing straight line testing and if she can handle taking a car around Silverstone I'm sure she can handle a straight line test.

Fair play to her I say. I've met some quick women and they've all come across the same barrier. It might not be obvious in your face stuff but the sexism is there when it comes to finances etc.

Hear, hear!

_________________Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

In her younger days she was consistently in the running for the McLaren BDRC Young Driver of the Year award and was crowned the top female karter in the world in 2000.

Yes, but what did she actually achieve? Were achievements the reason for being in the running for that Young Driver of the Year award, or was there another agenda? Promoting women in motorsport, for example? Did she win championships to earn those awards or not?

Moreover, what's the use of having a "top female karter" title? Motorsport is not a sport of gender, it's a sport of individuals. Being the "top female karter", what would that mean? When someone is eyeing F1, gender-based titles are not indicative of anything. Absolute performance is, regardless of gender.

In her younger days she was consistently in the running for the McLaren BDRC Young Driver of the Year award and was crowned the top female karter in the world in 2000.

Yes, but what did she actually achieve? Were achievements the reason for being in the running for that Young Driver of the Year award, or was there another agenda? Promoting women in motorsport, for example? Did she win championships to earn those awards or not?

Moreover, what's the use of having a "top female karter" title? Motorsport is not a sport of gender, it's a sport of individuals. Being the "top female karter", what would that mean? When someone is eyeing F1, gender-based titles are not indicative of anything. Absolute performance is, regardless of gender.

One way to fight discrimination in motorsport is to take away gender based titles or just create a women only formula as we do in football, cricket and rugby and be done with it.

_________________The underlying thing about all this,no matter how bright you are,no matter how logical one is or how much money one has,you have to be a completely stupid optimist...I believe there are about 3 million competition licences worldwide. -Perry McCarthy

A shakedown just makes sure all the wires are connected and it isn't going to go *kaboom* if the race drivers apply the throttle slightly. If Suzie Wolff gets a little exposure, then good on her. There's been worse drivers given a race seat.

Such as?

Off the top of my head:

Giovanni LavaggiYuji IdeRicardo Rossett

In fairness, Toto Wolff's money will be helping significantly.

Chanoch Nissany, Jean Denis Delatraz as well. Tempted to say Domenico Schiattarella, but only remember him from the F195 game.

Throw in any number of the rubbish one off drivers who appeared throughout the 70s too.

I don't see Wolff being any worse than a Baumgartner or a Friesacher either. I wonder if people are only freaking out because she's not a man. Just because she doesn't have a pair of actual bollocks doesn't mean she's any worse than any other pay driver we have ever seen.

Put your picket away. No one even sounded like they were criticizing her for having a vagina. A little too defensive me thinks.

One must wonder how many of the criticisms of Wolff found here are based off of numbers on her Wikipedia page.

As opposed to people saying she is better than Deletraz, Rossett or Ide based on absolutely nothing?

We've seen what Deletraz, Rossett and Ide could do in Formula One. Why not wait and see what Wolff can do before dismissing her as useless? She's suffered in DTM for years with out-dated machinery and in 2005 "Susie suffered a broken left leg and a fractured left ankle after a fall near her Scottish home in January and had ten pins and two plates inserted into her leg as a result". The left foot is the braking foot, mind you, considered the most important leg of the two when it comes to precise feelings in motor-racing. In her younger days she was consistently in the running for the McLaren BDRC Young Driver of the Year award and was crowned the top female karter in the world in 2000.

Why not see how she goes?

She's obviously a very competent racing driver and more than capable of doing shake down runs in the Williams, but as far as competing in F1 is concerned in the cruel light of the day there has to be 100+ male drivers that are more competent than her.

This is not a male thing wishing female drivers to fail, i remember going back 20 years or more watching Ellen Lohr compete in German touring cars and often mixing it at the front with the top guys, i always cheered her on, probably helped she was a bit tasty as well

One day we may see a woman compete in F1 on merit, that woman would be the biggest star in F1, but unfortunately there's no one on the horizon yet.